Goddess of Yesterday (28 page)

Since I had watched the battle from the ramparts, I knew that anyone up there could see us perfectly. I could only hope they thought nothing of it.

We waded through long grass. My heart was racing so fast I was out of breath. My hands felt slippery.

“Down, Calli,” said Pleis, wiggling. “I get down. Down down down.”

“Not yet. Be my good bunny rabbit.”

The grass ended. I was on the battlefield. The earth was churned and torn. We were utterly exposed. I was a boy with a child in my arms, crossing a field of corpses.

The day was hot and dusty, the sky a thick hazy exhausted blue.

We crossed a hundred feet, and then another hundred.

We skirted a party of Trojans lifting the much-stabbed body of a friend onto a cart.

We passed a soldier turning over an unknown corpse and discovering that it was a friend. To the music of his weeping, we took another hundred steps. Here and there, a shrub or patch of reeds had survived the feet of war. I aimed for each tiny thicket. The ships seemed no closer.

I prayed to my goddess but felt no presence.

I prayed to Apollo and to Athena, but they had never been my gods.

O, Nicander, my king, with your grave in the sand. Petra, my queen, your fate surely hard. Callisto, my princess, burned alive. Give me grace to save this boy, as I was not able to save you.

We were reaching the end of the battlefield. After this final work party, we would be in a no-man's-land. Still a quarter mile before we reached the ford in the river.

Now there were only six or eight Trojans between me and my goal.

Thousands of Greeks. To reach Menelaus we would have to pass hundreds of beached ships. How would I prove our identity to those captains? They were not men to waste time on questions. Truce or not, they would pick up the nearest spear and dispose of a spy in an excellent disguise— childhood.

Pleis shifted on my hip and looked back at the city. “Mama,” he said, astonished and happy. “Look, Calli. Onna wall. Mama.”

He had learned a new skill. He had learned to wave. “Mama,” he called, waving.

I caught his hand. “Shhh, Pleis, be a bunny rabbit, don't make a sound.”

The Trojan party were laboriously shifting a dead horse to reach the body it had crushed.

Pleis was too little to connect his mother with the loneliness of his little cell. He loved her. He pulled his hand free and waved again and called much more loudly, “Mama!”

On their knees around the dead horse, the Trojan men looked up. One was Zanthus. He knew me right away. “Callisto?” he said, puzzled. “Pleisthenes?”

But the Trojan next to him closed rough hands around my wrists. “The little Greek princess,” he said, spitting in my face. “A spy for Menelaus, are you? Taking his vermin child with you?”

King Priam heard my case as if it were any other; as if it were a dispute over a bad debt or the location of a fence. Some of his princes were there. Paris. Deiphobus. Hector. His queen was there, and Helen, of course.

They had taken Pleis from me. I would not get him back. Menelaus would not get him back either.

I remembered saying to Bia at Amyklai,
Helen will kill me. Yes
, Bia answered.
Delay that as long as possible.
I could postpone my death no longer. There was but one thing I might still accomplish. I could take down the men of the twisted fish.

“As I crossed the plain to bring his son to Menelaus, I overheard a plot, my king,” I told Priam. “There are seven ships from Olizon. Their men plan to sneak into the city where the wall is weakest, by the fig tree. During the night they will break into the sacred temple of Athena and steal the Palladium. Thus would Troy be defeated.”

People paused. All Troy knew that the city would fall without the Palladium.

“No,” said Paris. “That is
your
plot, girl.
You
were going to organize that expedition.
You
would betray Troy.”

“I would not betray this city!” I cried. “Troy has been kind to me. With your women have I spun. With your princess have I shared a joyful winter. I too worshiped at the Palladium and dedicated myself to the goddess. I tell you this to save the Palladium. You must kill the men of Olizon.”

King Priam, in his sweet elderly way, seemed actually to consider my words.

“You lie!” said Helen, flinging words as she would have liked to fling a knife. She turned to Priam. “The girl was traitor to me, my dear father. Me—whom she claims to serve. She snatched my sweet son from his crib.”

I knelt before Helen. “I do not plead for my own life, O queen,” I said, “but for the life and safety of Pleisthenes. Your sweet son is in grave danger. He—”

Helen whirled upon me. I thought she would slap me, as she had Cassandra, but she took hold of the woolly cap and
yanked hard. There was a collective gasp from the court. I knew how my naked skull must gleam. Shame joined terror in my heart.

“Daughter!” exclaimed Priam, getting to his feet. His sons sprang up to steady him and he bustled forward. He took my hand and raised me up. He laid a hand on my smooth scalp. He kissed my cheek.

I do not know who was more amazed—Helen or me.

“Thea!” called Priam.

It is a name meaning “divine” and, in Troy, is given to the head priestess of the Palladium. This Thea was large and dignified, in robes woven of scratchy coarse thread. She too laid a hand on my head and kissed my cheek. “Welcome, child. You said you had dedicated yourself to the goddess, and so you have. You have surrendered your hair, your greatest glory. Thus does a maiden display her love for the goddess.”

Thea placed her thumb on my forehead to bless me, exactly where Petra had done it all those years before. “You will serve the Palladium all the days of your life, daughter. You will experience poverty, because along with hair, you will lose all earthly things. You will not see daylight again,” said Thea dreamily. “Beneath our temple are long dark tunnels, which lead to cisterns of water and great stores of treasure. There will you serve, in the bowels of the earth.”

Truly, the gods had spit upon my prayers.

But Helen of Troy was smiling. A life of poverty and a bald skull were certainly a punishment to her taste. “I shall walk those temple steps, girl,” said Helen, “and know that you are under my feet. Toiling in the dark. Forever my slave.”

The sacred temple had been cut into bedrock. Narrow steps laddered down and down and down. Water dripped from walls and oozed out of cracks. Moss grew, and fungus, and slime. The hem of my novice's robe was wet. I curled it up and over my arm to keep it dry and Thea said, “No. The water is a gift from the goddess. The rest of your life, your feet will be chilled by that sacred water.”

My head ached from the cold. I asked for a kerchief or a veil.

“No,” said Thea. “The goddess must always have your shining head in sight. Every day you must prove again that for her sake you have given up your beauty and set aside your hopes for a husband and a family.”

O Euneus. I did hope for a husband and a family. All winter I pretended and I hoped. But all I will have of you is memory and all you will have of me is one bead that wasn't even mine; it was Hermione's.

I thought of the puppy I had held for one afternoon. Anthas. Flower. I would never see a flower or a puppy again.

Down we went into the treasury of Troy. Wet rooms gleamed in Thea's torchlight as a courtyard gleams after rain. There sat the tribute taken from generations of ships passing through the Hellespont.

“Here,” said Thea, “do we keep bronze and tin, iron and gold, silver and copper. It must not turn dim and dull. Every day you will circle, polishing the possessions of the Palladium.”

I did not bother to address my goddess of yesterday. She does not dwell in the underworld and does not care about metals precious to kings.

If I am fortunate, I thought, and die at fifty as most
women do, I will pass thirty-seven years rubbing the sides of ingots. “I am a fine needlewoman,” I said brightly. “In the goddess's honor—”

“No,” said Thea. “The daughters of King Priam embroider for the Palladium. Your service is like your head, bare and humble.” She stroked my scalp. “This is most unusual, my child. Your head is as smooth as a baby's bottom. No stubble. Did you use some special herb upon it?”

“The gods took my hair. It will never grow back.”

“You are doubly blessed,” said Thea. She led me down a tunnel whose ceiling got lower and lower until she was bent double, barely able to hold her torch in front of her. I crept behind. I could not bring myself to ask where I would sleep. Every surface was hard, wet and cold. I was beginning to realize that I would not be given a torch. I imagined myself in this dark slimy world. Eventually I would have to lie down.

At a swollen place in the tunnel, Thea paused and straightened a little. The tunnel continued, too narrow for a woman the size of the priestess. Sitting on a low pedestal before us was an idol, flecked with gray and streaked with black. The idol had neither face nor body.
It was another Palladium.

For a long time, Thea and I knelt. When she backed away, I was too full of prayer to mind. I prayed for the real Callisto in death and for my Pleis in life. I prayed Hector would survive the war and Andromache would have the child she wanted to name after the Scamander River.

Without the torch of Thea, I could not even see the Palladium before me. I ran my fingers over its scarred and terrible surface and I bargained with the goddess. “O Ancient One, I shall serve you all the days of my life. You serve Pleis. He is a prince. Let him live.”

There was nothing around me but cold and silence. There would not be light again. Not unless Thea returned to rescue me. Not unless I disobeyed and crept back up the tunnel, desperate for light and company.

I heard whimpering and knew it was mine.

I reached inside my ugly robe for my Medusa, to whom I had clung through every trial and sorrow. She was warm from my flesh.

After a long time, I sang to my goddess.

O goddess of yesterday…who guided me over the hazy sea… who held me safe in strange fortresses and slept with me by night… O goddess, be with me now.

Fragrance filled the cavern.

It was soft, like mint or early morn.

Come
, it said.

I tucked my Medusa into my sash and crawled away from the idol, and on down the dwindling hole of the rest of the tunnel. My gown tore under my knees. The passage grew so narrow that I would have to back up to return. Wet rocks scraped my back. I crawled through an inch of icy flowing water. With my fingers I explored the floor ahead of me and always there was more tunnel.

And still the fragrance called.

The floor began to slope sharply down. I crawled with my hands far below my knees, pitching forward, but without room to fall.

The fragrance filled my nose. I felt the soft touch of leaves.

“O goddess of yesterday,” I whispered.

I was out of the tunnel, and I was out of Troy, a thousand feet from the citadel and far below it. Hundreds of torches lit the great walls. It was more magnificent than the sky.

I did not fully emerge from my hole but peered through grass as a rabbit peeks from the clover. The sweet scent I had followed was hay; the first cutting of the season. By moonlight I could see it drying in heaps.

There were many gods to thank. Many bargains to be struck. When I had finished praying, I turned myself around, rooting like a rabbit, and crawled back up the tunnel, my knees bleeding and my hands raw, up and up the slippery dark. When the tunnel was high enough that I could get off my knees, I felt the walls until my fingers found the idol.

“Let me pass, Ancient One. I am in the safekeeping of another god. I will bring you flowers on my return. You have not seen flowers before. I know, because at your feet there are no wilted petals, no dry blooms, no trace of honor. I will honor you.”

I crawled on.

And then I could stand and then there was light.

F
ROM THE
P
ALLADIUM STEPS
, I watched priests and priestesses still circling funeral pyres. They had been honoring the dead all through the day and all through the night, and still there were more dead to be celebrated.